The Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) has adopted a body of standards that relates to the digitization of video and audio and that covers a wide variety of compression techniques. Devices that are compliant with the MPEG standards include VHS players, DVDs, telephones, digital cameras, and satellite, terrestrial, and cable receivers such as digital televisions and high definition televisions, etc.
Many of these devices generate installation and/or configuration menus to perform custom set-up. In typical situations where the configuration program has access to the MPEG decoder of the MPEG compliant device, a simple on-screen display can be generated by interacting with the graphics overlay capability of the MPEG decoder. However, in the case of a remote control device or a device that only has access to the compressed MPEG stream, the generation of on-screen displays becomes a much more difficult undertaking because no overlay capability is available.
The present invention relates to the generation of on-screen displays when the compressed MPEG stream but not the MPEG decoder of an MPEG compliant device is available.